Epson Perfection V500 Office Color Scanner (B11B189071)

Epson Perfection V500 Office Color Scanner (B11B189071) Review

I switched to the Epson Perfection V500 Office Scanner from a Fujitsu ScanSnap S500 Clr 18PPM/36IPM Dupl Scanner, which I love, but is not really designed for scanning photos. The advantage of this model over the Scansnap (and other scanners), is that it is specifically targeted for photo scanning, but also contains a document feeder for office work. Prior to this, there has never really been a sufficient product for photo scanning and semi-large scale office work. That is because no one likes to put photos through a document feeder, which usually will not handle small photos well, skew the images, or simply tear them to shreds. Almost all photo scanners use a flatbed for this very reason. I have used other scanners, such as the HP ScanJet 5590 Digital FlatBed Scanner, which contain a flatbed and a feeder (and even photo negative templates), but that scanner is awful and I haven't seen a decent one since. Fortunately, the Epson V500 seems to handle photos a little better.

The Epson Perfect V500 Office Scanner is nothing more than an Epson Perfection V500 Photo Scanner with an Epson scanner automatic document feeder ( B12B813391 ) attached to it and sold as one unit. If you only need to scan photos and don't have a real use for scanning multi-page documents, you should save yourself some money and get just the photo scanner. If you already own the V500 photo scanner, you should just buy the document feeder and attach it. This product is for people who need both.

As an office product, the scanner works pretty well. The document feeder never jammed on me and fed relatively quickly (but not as quickly as my Fujitsu). One touch scanning of monochrome documents worked well and truly was "one-touch." One big difference I noticed between the Epson and my old HP is that the scanning software with the Epson is much better. Usually software bundled with scanners is awful and bloated.

As far as a photo scanner, I couldn't be happier. It comes with plastic templates for holding your slides and photos. I first tried it out with some old photos and was very satisfied with the results. I do not know too much about Adobe Photoshop Elements, but I am capable of some basic photo manipulation. I didn't need to do any of that because the automatic settings with the software handled my photos very well and I didn't feel the need to do any post processing. It certainly isn't going to give you professional results unless you manually touch up your photos, but what it did do was more than enough for my purposes of just digitally archiving my photos. I next tried some 30-year old slides I had with the slide template. I've tried this before with older scanners and hated the results, and ended up taking them to a photo lab. The Epson, however, scanned my slides and my negatives almost at a professional level and the results were great. The slides came out looking much better than my prints because you can scan them at a higher resolution (6400 dpi compared to only 300 dpi for photos). I did find it a little slow to scan the slides, but it was bearable (too about an hour to scan 44 slides).

My only real problem with the scanner is that I felt like the photo scanning was too slow. Hopefully they will be able to improve on this when the technology is better. Overall though I am very satisfied with it.

Epson Perfection V500 Office Color Scanner (B11B189071) Feature

• Quickly scan multiple documents
• Create extraordinary enlargements from film
• Remove the appearance of dust and scratches from film
• Scan slides, negatives and medium-format film
• Restore faded color photos with one touch

Epson Perfection V500 Office Color Scanner (B11B189071) Overview

Epson Perfection V500 Office Color Scanner

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*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Aug 11, 2010 12:56:04